


Picnic

by Mireille



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-02
Updated: 2004-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8107168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: "Remind me again what we're celebrating? Because it looks like we got our asses kicked pretty good today." Set in an AU third season. This was a ficathon request in which I had to have Doyle around in the third season of AtS.





	

"Remind me again," Gunn said, reaching past Doyle to snag another bottle of beer from the cooler, "what we're celebrating? Because it looked to me like we got our asses kicked pretty good today." 

"It wasn't that bad, Charles," Fred argued. "Nobody got hurt. Well, not very bad, anyway," she added. 

"Yeah, but no dead demons plus people getting hurt doesn't sound like party time to me."

"Speaking as one of the people who got hurt," Cordelia said, waving her hand toward her elastic-bandage-wrapped ankle, "I'm all for celebration. In fact, I'd have to say that I'm campaigning on a pro-party platform, here."

"I'm not saying I'm complaining," Gunn said. "Man's gotta eat, after all, even if it worries me that Angel's doing the cooking."

"Hey, now, Angel's a good cook," Cordelia said. "Especially for a guy who doesn't eat." 

"Yeah, that's my point. He doesn't eat, and do we really want the guy who gets turned into a pile of dust if he catches on fire doing the _grilling_?"

"Did it ever occur to you that _some_ of us are trying to have a good time?"

Gunn shook his head. "Like I said, I'm not complaining.  There's food, there's beer, there's Fred, there's _not_ any of us missing any major body parts. Sounds like a party to me. I'm just saying, most people don't come home from work and say 'man, we really screwed that one up, let's have a picnic.'"

"Look at it this way," Doyle said. "Maybe we came home and said 'we're not dead--unless we started out that way--let's have a party.'"

Angel looked over at them, then; he'd been dividing his attention pretty equally between the food and the infant carrier taking up one of the lawn chairs, and Doyle, at least, had assumed he wasn't listening. "I promised Connor we'd go on a picnic," he said. 

"And there you have it," Doyle said to Gunn. "Connor hasn't figured out that he has fingers and toes yet, but he wanted to go on a picnic. Besides, we could use something to lift our spirits."  Things really hadn't gone well today, at all; the spell Wesley had found to disable the Llaenwed demons' defensive magics had backfired, strengthening them instead, and they'd been lucky to get away. Cordy's sprained ankle, Wesley's broken arm, and the deep--though probably nearly-healed, by now--gashes down Angel's back had been a small price to pay for their escape. 

Doyle looked over at Wesley. Apart from Angel, who was taking this whole "dad" thing far too seriously, if you asked him--the insistence on being the one at the barbecue grill was going just a little too far, but then again, Angel _could_ , surprisingly enough, cook--everyone else was sitting around the small campfire he and Fred had managed to get going:  Cordy with her foot propped up on a box, Fred sitting next to Gunn, her head resting on his shoulder, Doyle dividing his attention between checking on Cordelia and encouraging Connor to 'smile for your uncle Doyle.'  But Wesley was sitting some distance apart from the others, and he hadn't said much of anything since they got out here. He didn't even seem to notice that Fred had been talking to him for the last few minutes, and that, Doyle thought, was completely unlike Wesley, who generally paid more attention to Fred than made Gunn happy.

"Okay, then," Fred said, grinning, "That's one burger with grape jelly and pickled beets for Wes, right?"

He nodded, saying, vaguely, "Yes, that sounds…." Then he stopped, blinking at her. "Positively revolting. What are you talking about?"

She grinned at him. "Proving you weren't listening to me."

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I was thinking about something else."

"Yeah, I know. Wes, nobody blames you for what happened.  Rick's didn't have everything you needed for the spell, you had to make substitutions, it doesn't always work.  It's like putting skara-fruit in with your grains instead of kalla berries, it looks like it ought to be okay, but then when you taste it, you spit it halfway across the cave."

He nodded, and that seemed to reassure Fred, at least to the point where she started paying more attention to the not-entirely-subtle tension in the atmosphere that always came from Gunn when she and Wesley talked about anything other than strictly business. 

It didn't reassure Doyle.  Then again, maybe he'd been the only one to notice that for once, Wesley hadn't been looking at Fred much all evening.  He hadn't been staring off into space thinking, either; he'd been watching Angel and Connor. 

It kind of wasn't surprising, because they all spent a lot of time watching Connor; not as much as Angel did,  but still, he was as close as most of them were ever going to get to being parents, and all of Connor's honorary "aunts" and "uncles" were, in their own ways, very taken with him. 

Not surprising at all, then. But worrying, because Doyle had had a vision last night, and Wesley watching Angel and Connor like that made him nervous.  He'd seen… things. Wesley's hands wet with blood, and Angel holding Connor while he changed into vamp-face, and Wesley disappearing into the night with Connor in his arms. He didn't know how to interpret everything, but interpreting the visions wasn't really his job. He just _had_ them. And then he told Angel or Wesley or Gunn or Fred about them, and they worked out what the visions meant, and then they all six went and kicked some demon ass. 

But this time, he hadn't told anybody, not yet.  Except for Cordelia, of course, and it was hard to keep the fact that you'd just had a skull-splitting vision from the woman who'd been in your arms when you had it.  He was going to have to do something about it, of course; he just didn't know what.  It was one thing to tell Angel about a normal vision and have some of the details be fuzzy. But telling Angel you think you just saw one of his closest friends kidnap his son--and the rest, the blood and the vamp-face and Wesley lying maybe-dead on the ground with Connor nowhere in sight--without an explanation? It didn't sound like a good plan to him. Not at all. 

Cordelia leaned in closer to him. "You don't know how much time you have," she pointed out. "You have to _do_ something." 

He nodded, speaking just as quietly. "I know.  I just don't know _what_.  I mean, how can I tell Angel…?"

She sighed. "You can't. He's going to want answers, and all you have is--"

"--More questions," Doyle finished.  

"So maybe you should go to the guy with the answers?" she said, nodding slightly in Wesley's direction. 

Doyle nodded, after a moment, reaching over to get two beers from the cooler, opening the bottles before getting up and going over to Wesley. When the other man looked up, he held out one of the bottles. "Let's go for a walk," he suggested.

Wesley shook his head. "I'd rather not…"

Very quietly, he said, "We need to talk." He didn't know whether Wesley guessed what this was about, or whether he just didn't feel like arguing, but he got to his feet, taking the bottle. 

Doyle waited until they were a little way away from the others before saying, "If anyone asks, I'll tell the others I was asking you for help thinking of a present to get Cordy."

"When in reality, you were…."

"I had a vision last night," Doyle said abruptly--maybe not the best way to bring the subject up, but he hadn't been able to think of a better one.  "You were in it." Then, forcing a grin, "And we're going to pretend that doesn't sound like a cheap pick-up line, all right?"

Wesley gave him a weak smile. "So this is a warning that my life's in danger, is it?"

"Possibly," he said, thinking of the flash he'd gotten of Wesley lying bleeding on the ground. "Is something going on that we ought to know about?"

"No," Wesley said, too quickly.  "No," he said again, less certainly.

"It's about Connor, I know that much.  Is something else after him?" A sudden thought struck him. "The Scourge? I was wondering when they'd…"

Wesley shook his head.  "Angel," he said quietly.  

"Angel?"

"Keep your voice down.  There's no need for the others to know…."

"I'd say there's _every_ need," Doyle argued. "Besides, I know. Cordelia knows."

"You told Cordelia?"

"She knew I'd had a vision.  Visions mean possible paying customers, and you know she has that thing about our being able to pay the light bill."

"Have you told Angel?"

"No. I didn't want to tell him that I'd had a vision about Connor without having some idea what it was that I'd seen."

Wesley nodded, silently, and they walked a bit further before he said anything. "'The father will kill the son.'"

"Come again?"

"It's a prophecy. About Connor. 'The father will kill the son.'"

"And you're sure? I mean, no offense, but there was that whole _shanshu_ thing that had us all thinking Angel was going to die…."

Wesley's back stiffened slightly. "I'm quite certain, Doyle."

"And you were planning to tell us when?"

"I wasn't." 

"You-- I don't care if you _are_ still technically in charge of the place, Wes, you can't just decide to ignore…."  Then he thought about his vision a bit more, and shook his head. "You weren't going to ignore it, were you? You were going to take Connor and run."

"Just until I was certain he'd be safe with Angel."

"Do you _really_ think Angel could hurt Connor? Look at him," Doyle said, glancing back over his shoulder. The others had started eating without them, and Angel was sitting on one of the lawn chairs, giving Connor his bottle.  "He'll be singing--if you can call it singing--him to sleep next." 

"' _The father will kill the son_ ,'" Wesley quoted again.  

"And taking Connor away will kill Angel! I can't let you do that, and neither will Cordelia." When Wesley didn't reply immediately, he added, "And neither will Gunn and Fred."

"You're going to tell them?"

"Hell, yes, I'm going to tell them. We're a team. They deserve to know what's going on. The five of us, we could stop this."

"It's a _prophecy_."

"Okay, yeah, it's a prophecy.  Does it say when? Does it say how? Maybe Connor will be ninety years old and on a respirator, and Angel will be the one to pull the plug. Maybe they'll be in a car one day going to Connor's kid's high school graduation, and Angel will run a red light."

"They don't write prophecies about things like that."

"We can make this not happen," Doyle insisted.  "There are five of us. And Lorne, too. He's crazy about the rugrat; you know he'll help. We can protect Connor until you work out how this is supposed to happen, and then we'll stop it."

"I don't think--"

"The only other thing I can think of is to go straight to Angel with it, right now."

"It'll devastate him."

"Not as much as you taking Connor from him will."

After a long moment, Wesley nodded. "You're not leaving me with a choice, are you?" 

Doyle grinned. "And that's why you're the brains of the outfit."

"You'll get the others together? Without Angel? I don't want him to know unless there's no other way."

"Yeah, all right. We'll do it at our pl-- I mean, Cordy's place," he said. He did, technically, still have a room at the Hyperion.  The fact that he didn't spend a lot of time there didn't figure into it. 

Another nod, and Doyle felt compelled to fill the silence. "It'll be all right," he said. "We help the helpless, remember? And if a baby doesn't fit that description, I don't know who does."

This time, his remark was met with a faint smile. "Shall we get back?" Wesley said. "I imagine they'll be wondering what we've found to talk about for this long."

"Nah," Doyle replied, grinning. "They'll know we're avoiding Angel's singing."

That got him another faint smile as they started walking back. 

They'd find out what was going on, Doyle told himself, firmly.  They were a team, and they weren't going to let Angel down.  He wasn't sure _how_ they'd do it, but they would, as long as Wesley didn't try to do this all on his own.  That wasn't how it worked. 

But there were five people who'd do just about anything for Connor, and for Angel, and so it was going to be all right, in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> I assumed that Cordy didn't get a vision about this, in the canon timeline, for two reasons: It'd mess up Jasmine's plans, and she was off on vacation with Groo.


End file.
